The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a widely used measure of narcissism; however,
several different conflicting factor structures have been proposed. The present study
aimed to untangle those differences by offering a bifactor model of narcissism with
an underlying general narcissism factor and several specific factors. Our objective
was to estimate the variance explained by the general and the specific factors. Therefore,
we applied a set of confirmatory factor analyses on three independent studies (N =
791;N = 319 andN = 237), and also tested the construct validity of these factors with
other contemporary measures of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, big five personality
traits, explicit self-esteem, gender and well-being. Our results suggest that the
bifactor model with three specific factors yielded acceptable fit to our data in all
of the different single-stimulus response formats and languages used in our studies
and modelling three specific factors offered more insight into the adaptive and maladaptive
characteristics of narcissism. The general narcissism factor alone explains only about
half of the common variance, highlighting the importance of the specific factors as
well.
